Analysis: Is Television Too White

Is Television Too White?

In the United States, the average amount of time spent daily on watching television is around five hours and eleven minutes. Ninety nine percent of households have at least one television, and fifty six percent have some kind of cable (Neilson). Watching television is a staple in the average day of an American, but what exactly do most people see when they turn on their favorite program? Do most people see diverse cultures, or are the programs they watch “white washed”? Critics claim that television programming is white washed because of the lack of major channels that have programs that have minorities as main characters, the fact that the most popular programs in history have casts of predominantly white actors, and that most commercials use white actors instead of minorities.

Some of the most popular channels on television today include Fox, CNN, ESPN, ABC, MTV, and AMC (Salman). These channels are viewed by millions of people each day, and their content is selectively white. Popular programs on ABC include Lost, Grey’s

All six of the main characters in Friends are white. In Breaking Bad, the main protagonists, Walter White and Jessie Pinkman are Caucasian. In Grey’s Anatomy, the majority, save for a handful, are also white. These three programs have some of the highest rating in television history, yet include very few minority characters in them. Does this mean that the most favored programs can’t have minorities in them? No, because of the two programs, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and The Cosby Show, that topped the list of Complex Magazine’s top 25 African American Sitcoms (Kimble). These had some of the highest amount of views of any television programs when they were popular in the 1980s and 1990s. Even today a popular cartoon on Adult Swim called The Boondocks primarily focuses